Where to look for graduate jobs

Many of us feel that the bad side of being a university student is that, yep, at some point you do have to grow up and graduate. When this happens, not only will you have to work out what it is you actually want to do, you’ll also need to find someone who’s willing to pay you to do it. The more information you can find about the graduate job market that awaits you, the better prepared you’ll be to face the “real”, non-student world when the time comes.

With this in mind, here’s a few ideas of some good places to start looking around for graduate jobs...

Graduate schemes

To begin, you might like to consider looking at graduate schemes. These are training schemes which many companies invest into in order to attract top new blood to their company.

The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers – perhaps the best way to start investigating the world of graduate schemes, and get some inspiration for where to apply when you finally spread your wings and leave the university nest.

Job boards

A bit like the old listings sections in the Sunday newspapers, you don’t have to sign up to anything to use online job boards.There are many different ones which advertise graduate positions, but these are some of the most helpful.

JobisJob graduate jobs – an all-purpose job board which pulls in hundreds thousands of job offers from all over the UK. Do a search for ‘graduate’ along with your location and take a look at what comes up – at the time of writing, around 40,000 graduate jobs were listed.

Milkround – graduate jobs and schemes, as well as listings of internships and general advice and information on topics like “Your first job”, “Postgraduate study areas” and “In the workplace”. Also features info about different industries.

Reed.co.uk graduate jobs – another all-purpose job board. As well as job offers, you can look up different courses. There’s also a section for careers advice. Around 11,000 job offers for graduates at time of writing.

Social networks

Facebook has recently launched their own space for job listings, but really the top competitor in the social networks is:

LinkedIn – run a search for ‘graduate’ in LinkedIn to find jobs which are on offer in the companies of people within your network. Make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date before applying!